1^  • 


Oak  Street 
UNCLASSIFIED 


% 


m 


Vol.  IX  OCTOBER— DECEMBER,  1922  N^er  I 

ISSUED  QUARTERLY  ~^ 


Published  by  Randolph-Macon  Woman's  Colle 


BULLETIN  OF 


RANDOLPH-MACON 
WOMAN'S  COLLEGE 

LYNCHBURG.  VA. 


LIBERAL  EDUCATION 

BY 
HARRY  WOODBURN  CHASE,  Ph.  D.,  LL.  D., 

President  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina 


% 


"a; 


Entered  as  second-class  matter  January  5,  1915,  at  the  postoffice  at   Lynchburg,  Virginia 
under  the  Act  of  August  24,  1912. 


BULLETIN 

OF 


RANDOLPH-MACON 
WOMAN'S  COLLEGE 


LIBERAL  EDUCATION 

BY 
HARRY  WOODBURN  CHASE,  Ph.  D.,  LL.  D., 

President  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina 


Published  by 

RANDOLPH-MACON  WOMAN'S  COLLEGE 
LYNCHBURG.  VIRGINIA 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2013 


http://archive.org/details/liberaleducationOOchas 


Liberal  Education* 

By  Harry  Woodburn  Chase,  Ph.  D.,  LL.  D., 

President  of  the  University  of 
North  Carolina 

The  invitation  to  deliver  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  address  at  this 
institution  is  one  of  which  I  assure  you  I  am  deeply  appreciative. 
I  have  read,  and  listened  to,  a  good  many  such  addresses,  but  I 
confess  that  I  felt  some  apprehension  when  it  occurred  to  me 
after  I  had  accepted  your  invitation  that  I  had  never  before  been 
so  fortunate  as  to  deliver  one.  This,  then,  is  my  first  appearance 
in  such  a  capacity ;  may  I  hope  that  the  mantle  of  your  charity 
will  cover  my  shortcomings. 

It  has  seemed  to  me  that  with  a  group  like  this,  interested  in 
scholarship  and  in  intellectual  achievement,  it  might  be  fitting 
to  raise  the  general  question  as  to  what  nowadays  we  mean,  or 
can  mean,  and  ought  to  mean,  by  a  liberal  education.  I  do  not 
mean  that  I  can  answer  that  question — though  I  wish  I  could — 
but  there  is  no  question  that  presses  more  insistently  for  an 
answer,  none  that  is  of  more  importance  in  higher  education 
today.  And  because  it  is  an  insistent  problem,  and  because  every 
college-bred  man  and  woman  ought  definitely  to  be  interested  in 
it,  I  will  venture  at  least  some  comments  on  the  problem. 

There  comes  into  my  mind  whenever  I  think  about  liberal 
education  that  famous  saying  of  Milton 's :  ' '  I  call  therefore  a 
complete  and  generous  education  that  which  fits  a  man  to  per- 
form, justly,  skillfully,  and  magnanimously  all  the  offices,  both 
private  and  public,  of  Peace  and  War."  This  seventeenth  cen- 
tury conception,  I  confess,  interests  me  tremendously.  A  liberal 
education — that  was  what  Milton  meant — ought  to  fit  people  to 
do  effectively  anything,  anywhere,  at  any  time.  It  is  the  theory 
of  what  has  been  called  "undifferentiated  competence."  Little 
did  Milton  foresee  the  territories  that  the  specialist  was  one  by 
one  to  slice  away  from  his  "complete  and  generous  Education;" 
little  did  he  realize  the  schools  of  science  and  engineering  and 


^Founders'   Day  Address  delivered  in   the  College  Chapel,  March   11,    1922. 


4  Bulletin 

art  and  coiiiineree  and  education  and  agriculture  and  welfare 
and  law  and  medicine  and  pharmacy  and  so  on — little  did  he 
realize  the  multitude  of  years  and  courses  and  specializations 
that  we  of  the  twentieth  century  would  deem  necessar}^  to  fit  a 
man  to  perform  justly,  skillfully  and  magnanimously  some  little 
section  of  one  office,  either  public  or  private,  in  Peace  or  War. 
This  steady  encroachment  of  the  professions  and  the  specialties 
on  the  territory  of  liberal  education  is  inevitable,  but  it  has  pro- 
duced some  unhappy  results. 

It  has,  in  the  first  place,  caused  the  idea  of  a  liberal  education 
to  assume  quite  a  secondary  position  in  the  eyes  of  the  majority 
of  students  nowadays.  The  great  increase  in  student  enrollment 
all  over  the  countr}^  during  the  last  five  years,  for  example,  has 
been,  speaking  broadly,  not  in  the  liberal  but  in  the  professional 
and  specialized  courses.  In  institutions  which  maintain  a  variety 
of  courses  it  is  common  to  find  the  college  of  liberal  arts  either 
not  growing  at  all,  or  only  very  slowly,  w^hile  other  courses  are 
packed.  And,  furthermore,  it  must  be  confessed  that  in  many 
instances  it  is  the  better  and  more  ambitious  students  who  seem 
least  convinced  that  a  liberal  education  is  worth  w^hile. 

In  the  second  place,  the  college  of  liberal  arts  has  suffered 
greatly  from  comparison  with  the  professional  schools,  in  tw^o 
ways.  It  has  not  been  able  to  formulate  with  the  necessary  con- 
viction and  clearness  any  intelligible  idea  of  just  what  it  was 
about,  of  just  what  educational  creed  it  believed  with  all  its  heart 
and  soul.  One  need  only  look  through  a  representative  group  of 
college  catalogues  and  ponder  a  little  over  the  requirements  for 
the  A.  B.  degree  as  therein  set  forth,  to  realize  that  our  institu- 
tions are  absolutely  without  any  common  conception  of  what  a 
liberal  education  ought  to  mean.  A  friend  of  mine  who  had 
made  such  a  search  on  an  exhaustive  scale  reported  recently 
that  so  far  as  he  could  determine  the  only  idea  on  which  every 
college  of  liberal  arts  in  the  country  did  agree  was  that  at  some 
time  during  the  course  some  foreign  language  must  at  least  be 
pursued,  if  not  captured.  There  is  little  wonder  that  the  student 
wanders  bewildered  through  a  lal)yrinth  of  courses,  when  those 
whose  business  it  is  to  formulate  policies  differ  so  strongly  on 
the  very  basis  of  their  faith. 


Randolpii-IMacon  Womans  College  5 

Again,  the  liberal  arts  courses  have  suffered  in  comparison 
with  the  professional  schools  in  the  spirit  of  devotion  to  work 
they  have  been  able  to  maintain  among  their  students.  Natur- 
ally, in  this  respect  the  professional  schools  have  an  immense 
advantage,  in  that  the  relation  of  success  in  professional  work  to 
success  in  one's  career  is  much  more  evident,  but  even  with  all 
that  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  the  liberal  arts  courses  would 
have  quite  the  same  problem  if  those  in  charge  of  their  destinies 
had  themselves  a  little  more  definite  idea  of  the  value  and  aims 
of  their  work. 

Be  the  courses  what  they  may,  the  traditional  sort  of  liberal 
education  has  unquestionably  undergone  a  marked  decline  in 
prestige  in  the  minds  of  the  youth  of  the  present  generation. 
In  fact,  I  have  recently  heard  the  inquiry  raised  in  all  serious- 
ness whether  the  college  of  liberal  arts,  not  reinforced  by  any 
vocational  motive,  could  sustain  itself  as  a  permanent  part  of 
American  education. 

It  is  perhaps  time  for  me  to  say  here  that  I  am  not  one  of  those 
who  would  minimize  the  value  of  liberal  education.  I  believe 
profoundly  in  the  ideals  which  it  strives  to  inculcate.  But  I  do 
believe  that  those  of  us  who  are  interested  in  liberal  education, 
and  who  deplore  the  present  uncertainty  of  its  tenure,  are  going 
to  make  absolutely  no  progress  by  passing  resolutions  deploring 
the  growth  of  the  vocational  idea,  or  lamenting  the  good  old  days 
of  required  Latin  and  Greek  for  everybody.  Rather  do  I  believe 
that  we  must  frankly  recognize  the  fact  that  our  liberal  arts 
courses  have  not  yet  made  a  satisfactory  adjustment  to  the  con- 
ditions of  modern  life,  and  we  must  seek  to  determine  along  what 
lines  that  adjustment  should  work  itself  out. 

"It  is  a  problem  which  needs  to  be  faced  without  prejudice. 
That  is,  perhaps,  a  large  part  of  the  trouble.  For  in  nothing  is 
it  more  difficult  to  disentangle  blind  tradition  from  the  wisdom 
of  experience  than  in  this  very  realm.  The  professional  school 
is  not  much  given  to  representing  the  sanctity  of  tradition.  It 
is  young,  and  it  is  close  to  life.  But  the  college  of  liberal  arts 
has  a  venerable  past,  and  the  hand  of  tradition  is  heavy  upon  it. 
It  has  always  resisted  new  departures.  Science,  strange  though 
that  now  seems,  forced  its  way   with  great  difficulty  into  its 


6  Bulletin 

curriculum,  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  modern  languages.  Psy- 
chology has  but  recently  become  a  member  of  its  household  on 
equal  terms,  and  sociology'  is  scarcely  yet  received  in  many  col- 
leges on  terms  of  cordial  intimacy.  ' '  That  which  is  and  has  been 
is  right,"  is  too  often  the  real  motto  over  the  doors  of  its  halls. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  decry  the  worth  of  tradition.  As  a  sta- 
bilizing agent  in  society  tradition  is  of  incalculable  value.  But 
when  tradition  becomes  more  than  that,  becomes  a  check  on 
normal  growth  and  on  the  freshness  and  vigor  of  thought,  when 
it  insulates  and  isolates  from  life,  then  we  need  with  great  care 
to  re-examine  the  foundations  on  which  it  rests,  to  assure  our- 
selves whether  or  not  the  passage  of  centuries  and  generations 
has  left  them  sound. 

Now  there  are  two  great  pillars  on  which  the  theory  of  liberal 
education  has  always  rested.  These  are  culture  and  mental  train- 
ing, or  discipline.  Now  one,  now  the  other,  of  these  elements 
has  been  to  the  fore,  but  the  trained  mind  and  the  cultured  mind 
have  always  been  conceived  as  the  intellectual  ends  that  liberal 
education  was  about.  Now  culture  and  discipline  are  both  reali- 
ties, but  what  of  the  traditions  that  have  grown  up  about  wha\ 
culture  is,  and  what  mental  training  is?  Are  they  correct,  in 
the  light  of  modem  life  and  modern  knowledge?     Let  us  see. 

And  first,  what  of  the  ideal  of  discipline?  What  that  means 
in  its  extreme  form  is  clear  enough.  It  is  the  theory  that  the 
mind  is,  so  to  speak,  exercised  and  sharpened  as  a  whole  by 
study.  The  value  of  the  subject  matter  is  of  secondary  impor- 
tance, or  of  no  importance  at  all ;  it  is  the  process  of  mastering 
it  which  is  education,  which  raises  the  general  mental  level.  The 
more  difficult,  perhaps  even  the  more  distasteful  the  subject,  the 
greater  its  value  in  producing  the  general  result,  which  is  the 
keen,  flexible,  trained  mind. 

Unfortunately  the  mind  is  not  so  simply  dealt  with.  One  may 
improve  his  general  bodily  health  by  resorting  to  specialized 
exercise,  but  hardly  his  general  intellectual  level  by  specialized 
study.  I  need  not  enter  into  the  intricacies  of  a  problem  that 
has  an  elaborate  special  literature  of  its  own,  that  has  busied 
psychological  laboratories  for  years.  It  is  enough  to  say  that 
all  training  is,  first  of  all,  specialized  training,  exhibiting  its 


Randolph -Macon  Womans  College  7 

chief  effects  in  precisely  that  field  of  operation  in  which  the 
effort  goes  on.  I  mean  to  say  that  the  student  of  algebra  gets, 
first  of  all,  not  the  ability  to  think  abstractly,  but  the  ability  to 
solve  algrebraic  equations,  and  that  the  student  of  Latin  gets 
first  of  all,  not  a  trained  mind,  but  a  knowledge  of  Latin  syntax. 
Magazine  advertisements  to  the  contrary,  we  do  not  train  our 
memories  by  learning  how  to  recall  the  name  of  Mr.  John  Jones 
of  Oshkosh,  nor  do  we  train  our  wills  to  mighty  instruments  of 
destiny  by  setting  aside  fifteen  minutes  a  day  for  their  develop- 
ment. I  have  said  that  we  get  first  of  all  a  training  in  the  specific 
field  in  which  practice  goes  on.  What  we  get  does  carry  over, 
to  be  sure,  into  other  situations,  but  just  in  proportion  as  they 
have  elements  in  common  with  those  in  which  specific  training 
has  gone  on.  Thus,  of  course,  one  who  learns  from  one  language 
what  inflection  is  has  at  his  command  a  certain  definite  body  of 
ideas  that  help  when  a  second  inflected  language  is  to  be  learned. 
And,  in  a  wider  field,  -one  who  learns  to  complete  a  given  difficult 
task  promptly  and  with  good  will  is  thereby  helped  in  complet- 
ing other  tasks.  But  can  students,  by  any  sort  of  liberal  course 
learn  to  "Think"?  The  real  answer  to  the  question  is  another 
question — to  think  about  what?  Thinking  doesn't  go  on  in  a 
vacuum,  with  no  motive.  There  is  always  some  sort  of  a  problem 
to  be  solved.  The  student  of  chemistry  learns  to  think  about 
chemistry,  and  the  student  of  literature  about  literature.  But 
I  doubt  very  much  whether  the  student's  capacity  to  think  in 
fields  in  which  he  is  not  specially  trained  is  improved  by  special 
training  in  other  fields,  save  as  the  two  sets  of  situations  have 
definite  elements  in  common.  The  student  who  has  been  ''dis- 
ciplined" on  mathematics  and  Latin  and  Greek  goes  out  into 
the  world.  Will  he  have  a  greater  ability  to  think  about  the 
sort  of  problems  that  confront  him  than  the  average  man?  So 
far  as  those  problems  have  common  elements  with  his  mathe- 
matics, and  Latin,  and  Greek,  Yes.  Otherwise,  No.  Those  com- 
mon elements  may  of  course  be  present ;  they  may  include  such 
factors  as  attention  to  duty,  impatience  with  slovenly  results, 
and  the  like.  But  it  is  fair  to  say  that  the  more  remote  from 
the  actual  contacts  and  problems  of  life  a  subject  lies,  the  less 
its  general  value,  just  because  the  situations  that  call  into  play 
any  portion  of  the  training  received  are  few  and  far  between. 


8  Bulletin 

I  have  been  very  dogmatie  ai)()ut  all  this,  and  I  am  not  sure 
that  I  have  been  clear.  But  the  literature  is  available,  and  con- 
vincing:. The  point  I  am  concerned  to  make  is  that  I  dO'  not 
think  we  can  include  subjects  in  or  exclude  them  from  our  liberal 
curricula  on  the  ground  that  they  are  or  are  not  good  instru- 
ments for  giving  general  discipline,  "teaching  to  think."  In 
fact,  I  believe  the  argument  points  irresistibly  to  the  conclusion 
that  those  subjects  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  do'  give  the  most 
wide-spread  sort  of  training,  are  those  which  have  most  in  com- 
mon with  the  life  situations  which  the  student  will  be  called  upon 
to  face.  I  am  assuming  that  we  all  recognize  the  fact  that  no 
mental  training  of  any  sort,  general  or  special,  comes  to  the  stu- 
dent who  is  content  with  a  mere  exposure  to  a  curriculum,  who 
is  thinking,  not  about  an  education,  but  how  with  the  least  effort 
to  pile  up  courses  toward  a  degree.  You  who  are  members  of 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  have  learned  an  attitude  toward  work,  toward 
the  task  of  the  day  and  the  moment,  that  will  be  of  immense 
value,  because  it  will  recur  again  and  again  in  daily  life.  It  is 
no  accident,  it  is  just  what  would  be  expected,  that  all  the  in- 
vestigations show  that  there  is  the  clearest  sort  of  relation  be- 
tween scholarship  in  college  and  success  in  one's  career. 

What,  now,  of  the  second  fundamental  conception  which  un- 
derlies liberal  education — the  conception  of  culture?  Culture, 
most  certainly,  is  a  word  that  one  ought  not  to  use  without  some 
analysis  of  what  he  means  by  it.  It  has  been  used  in  almost 
ever}'-  sense,  from  the  state  of  mind  arrived  at  by  having  for- 
gotten Latin  and  Greek  to  the  other  state  of  mind  reached  by 
having  had  colonial  ancestors.  Whatever  culture  may  not  mean, 
I  think  there  are  two  things  which  we  can  all  agree  that  it  does 
mean.  It  means,  first,  an  enrichment  of  one's  inner  life  for  the 
sake  of  that  enrichment,  and  for  the  increased  appreciation  and 
understanding  of  life  that  result.  Culture  means  genuine  en- 
richment, the  sort  of  mental  equipment  that  multiplies  points 
of  contact  with  the  world  of  men  and  books  and  art  and  nature. 
It  is  wholly  in  contrast  in  its  variety  and  liberality  and  range 
with  specialized  intensive  training  that  plows  deep  in  one  fur- 
row, ])ut  leaves  unturncul  all  the  remainder  of  the  field.  Its  aims 
are  insight  and  joy  and  a  visicm  of  beauty,  not  money  and  posi- 
tion.    It  beckons,  not  necessarily  to  a  more  successful  career, 


Randolph -]\Iac()n  Womans  College  9 

but  to  a  larger  life :  a  life  that  one  can  live  in  understanding 
and  sympathy  and  hai)piness  whatever  outward  circumstance 
may  bring. 

It  means,  second,  that  this  enrichment  is  not  only  an  indi- 
vidual but  a  social  thing.  Yocum,  in  a  stimulating  book,  has 
pointed  out  how  universall}^  culture  has  always  meant  something 
that  all  the  members  of  a  class,  or  a  group,  or  a  nation,  had  in 
common.  It  is  in  a  way,  a  social  language  shared  by  all,  com- 
mon manners,  common  knowledge  and  insight,  common  standards 
of  taste  and  appreciation.  For  the  Greek,  it  was  his  own  litera- 
ture, and  art,  and  philosophy — what  he  shared  in  common  in 
those  things  with  other  Greeks.  For  the  Mediaeval  mind,  it  was 
all  that  common  social  heritage  that  Dante  sums  up  in  his  Divine 
Comedy,  For  the  English  gentleman  of  the  Eighteenth  century 
it  meant  Latin,  Greek,  mathematics,  French,  perhaps  Italian, 
some  modern  literature,  and  a  little  history  and  art.  It  was  these 
things  that  stamped  him  as  belonging  to  the  class,  the  caste,  of 
culture.  For  us  today  it  means — what?  Certainly  not  what  it 
has  ever  meant  in  the  history  of  the  world  before.  For,  on  the 
one  hand,  our  common  basis  of  culture  must  be  democratic,  not 
aristocratic ;  for  higher  education  is  nowadays  itself  a  democratic 
thing.  Culture  as  we  must  conceive  it  today  cannot  be  the  sole 
possession  of  a  leisure  class  ,••  it  must  be  the  common  possession 
of  educated  men  and  women  who  are  busy  with  the  work  of  the 
world.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  culture,  if  it  be  true  and  genuine 
must  give  understanding  and  appreciation,  not  primarily  of  life 
as  it  went  on  somewhere  else  under  quite  different  conditions, 
but  of  life  as  you  and  I  experience  it.  If  our  minds  are  truly 
enriched  it  is  because  we  learn  to  look  on  life  as  it  goes  on  about 
us  with  insight  and  sympathy.  We  may  know  all  that  made  a 
cultured  Greek,  and  yet  not  be  a  cultured  American.  Every 
great  culture  has  been  close  to  life  as  it  was  actually  experienced 
and  lived.  Two  or  three  centuries  ago,  for  example,  the  common 
basis  of  culture  did  not  include  science;  science  hardly  existed; 
it  entered  into  the  common  life  of  man  at  few  points.  Today, 
with  the  world,  with  our  whole  outlook  and  circumstance  trans- 
formed by  its  agency,  how  can  there  be  true  culture  without  it  ? 
The  spirit  of  culture  lives  on  through  the  ages ;  its  body  must 
be  renewed  from  generation  to  generation  if  it  is  to  remain  the 


10  Bulletin 

vital  and  wholesome  thing  it  should  be.  There  is  no  fixed,  special 
and  permanent  body  of  knowledge  which  is  culture;  we  must 
always  ask  generation  by  generation — what  is  culture  here  and 
now  ?  What  must  \ve  get  to  see,  steadily  and  whole,  life,  our  life, 
yours  and  mine  and  that  of  our  fellows? 

AYhat  I  have  been  trying  to  do  in  what  I  have  ventured  to  say 
about  the  two  great  foundations  of  liberal  education,  the  foun- 
dations of  discipline  and  of  culture,  is  just  to  make  the  point 
that  there  is  no  contradiction  between  discipline,  rightly  con- 
ceived, and  culture,  rightly  conceived,  on  the  one  hand,  and  life, 
modern  life,  workaday  life,  practical  life,  on  the  other.  Train- 
ing, discipline,  is  first  of  all  special,  but  training  helps  in  other 
situations  just  in  proportion  as  common  elements  are  involved; 
and  obviously  the  nearer  to  actual  future  life  the  training  situa- 
tions are,  the  more  likely  their  elements  are  to  recur,  the  greater 
and  the  more  wide-spread  the  future  value  of  the  task.  Culture, 
too,  is  most  real  and  genuine  when  it  is  close  to  life.  Why,  then, 
should  liberal  education  shrink  from  life?  Is  today  less  noble 
than  yesterday?  Has  ever  any  generation  faced  a  life  that  it 
needed  more  to  understand  and  interpret?  Why  should  we  not 
take  as  the  great  dominant  motive  of  liberal  education  today, 
life  in  the  twentieth  century  in  America — the  South,  in  Virginia, 
in  North  Carolina?  Why  are  we  not  entitled  to  measure  the 
value  of  any  liberal  subject  by  the  contribution  which  it  makes 
or  does  not  make  to  our  understanding  of  and  our  attitude  to- 
ward that  life?  Do  not  misunderstand  me;  there  must  be  a  per- 
spective on  that  life,  a  background  against  which  it  is  viewed,  a 
determination  to  bring  improvement  into  it,  and  more  of  beauty, 
and  order,  and  fineness.  But  the  background  ought  not  to  be 
made  the  foreground,  the  play  ought  not  to  stop  before  the  last 
act. 

The  worst  thing  about  being  a  critic  is  that  one  is  supposed 
to  be  constructive  as  well  as  destructive.  If  the  li])eral  arts  col- 
lege is  not  facing  life  with  sufficient  resolution,  what  practically 
ought  it  to  do?  It  is  with  great  hesitation  that  I  venture  any 
sort  of  suggestion,  but  I  am  tonight  in  a  strategic  position  in 
that  I  am  at  a  safe  distance  from  my  own  institution,  and  I 
know  further  that  I  am  protected  by  your  generous  hospitality. 


Randolph-Macon  Womans  College  11 

I  believe,  then,  that  it  is  fair  to  say  that  liberal  education  should 
so  select  its  general  subject  matter  that  our  graduates  will  have 
a  common  stock  of  culture  based  on  its  American  life  of  today. 
If  we  select  on  this  basis,  I  believe  that  the  best  there  is  in 
mental  discipline  will  be  added  unto  us.  What,  then,  should  this 
common  basis  include? 

First,  of  course,  the  common  language  and  literature.  I  need 
not,  I  am  sure,  justify  the  position  of  English  as  a  fundamental 
subject.  It  is  already  secure.  Second,  history;  history  with 
social  and  economic  aspects  to  the  fore,  history  so  taught  and 
studied  as  to  set  present-day  life  against  a  background,  and  to 
aid  in  its  interpretation.  Third,  science.  It  is  difficult  to  choose 
among  the  sciences  that  which  is  most  fundamental  for  the  liberal 
arts  college.  My  own  belief  is  that  it  is  biology;  and  for  two 
reasons :  First,  because  some  knowledge  of  the  fundamentals  of 
physics  and  chemistry  is  usually  acquired  in  high  school,  and, 
second,  because  its  principles  have  within  the  last  two  genera- 
tions so  revolutionized  our  whole  outlook  on  life  that  I  do  not 
see  how  it  is  possible  for  anyone  to  enter  into  and  possess  the 
common  culture  of  today  without  some  understanding  of  the 
general  biological  point  of  view.  Furthermore,  this  point  of 
view  correlates  with  and  assists  in  the  study  of  the  fourth  of  my 
suggested  fundamentals,  which  is  social  and  political  science. 
Not  the  purely  theoretical  economics  of  the  classical  school,  nor 
the  political  science  that  describes  merely  the  machinery  of  gov- 
ernment, but  the  study,  perhaps  through  the  cooperation  of 
several  departments,  of  how  actually  people  live  and  do  business 
and  get  educated  and  govern  themselves  in  social  groups,  and 
what  the  principles  of  social  action  are.  Economics  and  soci- 
ology and  political  science  are  all  phases  of  one  subject — the 
behavior  of  men  in  groups — and,  as  such,  they  badly  need  corre- 
lation and  unity  of  viewpoint — a  viewpoint  which  should  stress 
not  merely  understanding,  but  the  obligation  of  the  individual 
toward  the  social  order  and  its  betterment. 

English,  the  mother  language,  with  its  rich  literature,  history 
as  the  interpretative  background,  biology  with  the  new  setting 
that  it  gives  life,  social  science  with  its  contribution  to  the  un- 
derstanding of  the  common  affairs  of  men — I  believe  that  these 


12  Bulletin 

few  thino^s  stand  out,  that  they  constitute  an  irreducible  mini- 
nuim  of  liberal  education.  To  those  the  individual  who  is  pass- 
ing through  four  years  of  college  has  the  opportunity  and  the 
obligation  to  add  much  more,  but  I  believe  that  in  a  very  real 
sense  an  education  that  lacks  any  one  of  these  four  elements  is 
not  truly  liberal.  A  second  language,  by  all  means,  whenever 
possible ;  far  better  one  foreign  language,  pursued  until  its  liter- 
ature is  added  to  one's  own,  for  increased  pleasure  and  insight, 
than  a  smattering  of  two  or  three  tongues  half -learned  and  soon 
forgotten.  As  between  the  ancient  and  modern  languages  there 
is  this  much  to  say ;  the  classical  civilizations  have  made  a  per- 
manent contribution  to  the  world.  But  the  relative  importance 
of  that  contribution  must  inevitabl}^  diminish  just  in  proportion 
as  the  conditions  of  our  civilization  come  to  differ  more  and  more 
from  those  of  classical  times.  The  contribution  of  the  classical 
civilizations  to  the  understanding  of  life  as  it  exists  today  is,  I 
believe,  distinctly  less  than  it  was  a  century  ago,  and  it  will 
diminish  from  generation  to  generation.  Their  permanent  con- 
tribution to  the  aesthetic  enjoyment  of  life  is  a  different  matter. 
Their  masterpieces  are  of  the  world's  great  treasures  for  all  time. 
But  for  the  average  student  I  very  much  doubt  whether  a  knowl- 
edge of  those  masterpieces  is  not  better  gained  through  a  study 
of  them  in  English  than  through  stumbling  translation  from  the 
original  tongue,  with  the  aid  of  a  dictionary  or  even  of  an  inter- 
linear translation.  I  doubt  seriously,  in  other  words,  whether 
we  can  very  much  longer  justify  for  the  average  student— I  am 
not  talking  now,  mind  you,  of  the  student  with  a  strong  language 
sense,  or  of  the  specialist — the  years  of  language  study  with  the 
imperfect  cultural  results  that  seem  to  be  obtained.  Better  re- 
sults, it  seems  to  me,  would  come  from  less  time  spent  in  a  direct 
study  of  what  directly  the  classical  culture  has  to  say  to  us  by 
way  of  appreciation  and  wisdom. 

I  have  not  included  mathematics  in  my  suggested  list  of  funda- 
mentals. A  knowledge  of  the  language  of  algebra  and  geometry 
is,  I  think,  a  part  of  our  necessary  common  culture.  But  I  doubt 
whether,  as  long  as  these  are  taught  in  high  schools  a  required 
course  in  mathematics  is  really  a  necessary  part  of  a  liberal 
college  education.  Let  me  remind  you  that  the  argument  for 
mental  discipline  is  not  so  strong  as  it   once  appeared.     The 


Randolph-Macon  Womans  College  13 

higher  mathematics  is  of  course  a  necessity  for  one  who  goes  far 
in  science,  but  as  a  requirement  for  all  students — why?  I  merely 
venture  to  raise  the  question. 

And  there  is  one  thing  more.  That  student  has  not  truly 
entered  the  inner  courts  of  culture  who  has  not  somehow  come 
to  unify  his  insight  into  life  and  his  appreciation  of  life  and 
of  his  obligations  toward  life  into  a  philosophy — a  philosophy 
that,  as  the  motto  of  our  Society  declares,  is  the  "guide  of  life." 
True  culture  without  a  philosophy  to  sustain  and  direct  it  is 
unthinkable,  and  there  is  no  greater  need  of  American  life  than 
a  recognition  of  this  fact.  If  I  have  not  added  philosophy  to 
my  list  of  fundamentals,  it  is  through  no  lack  of  recognition  of 
its  prime  importance ;  it  is  because  my  mind  is  not  clear  whether 
all  students  are  ready  for  its  syntheses,  whether  in  many  cases 
its  message  does  not  come  more  clearly  in  those  maturer  years 
after  college  halls  are  left  behind.  For  such  as  are  ready,  there 
is  nothing  higher  in  liberal  education. 

What  I  have  said  tonight  you  may  consider,  if  you  like,  simply 
as  a  series  of  personal  opinions  dogmatically  expressed.  You 
will,  I  know,  be  absolutely  convinced  of  the  statement  I  made  at 
the  outset — that  I  could  not  solve  the  problems  of  liberal  edu- 
cation. But  it  is  my  earnest  conviction  that  in  a  matter  of  this 
importance,  opinions  must  be  stated  and  restated  if  progress  is 
to  be  made.  There  is  no  sort  of  company  that  should  be  more 
interested  in  the  problem  of  liberal  education  than  such  a  group 
as  this.  You  are,  I  know,  guilty  of  having  theories  and  ideas 
about  it,  as  I  am.  And,  since  that  is  so,  I  may  perhaps  compare 
my  situation  at  this  moment  to  that  in  the  tale  of  the  negro  who 
had  exhausted  every  known  device  for  setting  a  balky  mule  in 
motion.  A  man  in  the  crowd  of  onlookers  that  had  gathered 
finally  recommended,  as  a  device  of  very  great  effectiveness,  that 
a  stone  be  tied  to  the  tail  of  the  unmoved  animal.  The  negro 
puzzled  over  the  idea  for  a  moment;  then  he  said:  ''Dat  might 
work  all  right,  but  let  him  that  is  without  sin  among  you  tie 
the  first  stone." 


3  0112105927765 


